Okay, so the other day I was watching a baseball game with my buddy, and he kept saying “LOB” this, “LOB” that. I’m like, “Dude, what the heck is LOB?” I mean, I kinda get the gist, but I wanted the full picture. So, I did what any self-respecting, slightly-confused baseball fan would do: I hit the internet!
Digging into the Meaning of LOB
First thing I did was fire up a search, tried a bunch of random stuff, and found a pretty good explanation of what LOB is. I learned, from my practice and reasearch, that it stands for “Left On Base”.
Basically, it’s all about how many runners a team leaves on base at the end of an inning. Those guys who didn’t make it home, they get counted as LOB. At first I try to found any fancy defination but it does’t work, the LOB is really just that!.
Figuring Out How It’s Calculated
So it is Left On Base. I understood that LOB is a team stat, not a specific person one. You add up all the runners left on base for each team during the whole game.
- Runner on first at the end of an inning? That’s 1 LOB.
- Bases loaded when the third out is made? Boom, 3 LOB.
- No runners on base? Zero LOB. Sweet!
I tried to find the way it is calculatd, and try my own: add all the base at the end of inning, that is LOB!
Why Should I Even Care About LOB?
At first, I was like, “Okay, cool stat, but so what?” But then, I did some research, and I started to see that LOB can be a sneaky indicator of how a team’s offense is really doing.
I tried some of the examples, and found, that, a high LOB could mean a team is getting a lot of base runners but not bringing them home. It’s about missed opportunities. A team could have a ton of hits, but if they’re leaving guys stranded all the time, they’re not scoring.
So, yeah, that’s my little deep dive into LOB. I went from being totally clueless to having a pretty good handle on it. Now I can impress my friend with my new found LOB knowledge, Haha!
